The Ditto List (37 page)

The Lions fumbled. He flicked off the TV and glanced at his watch. The phone rang once again. He grabbed his coat and left his apartment and drove through a storm to his ex-wife's mansion, arriving thirty minutes early, the unanswered phone still a mite in his inner ear.

Michele opened the door. Her eyes widened in surprise when she saw him, her mouth in pleasure. “D.T. How prompt. You must have missed mince pie more than I suspected.”

She leaned toward him and he kissed her cheek. She smelled like flowers, tasted like squash. The long red gown that covered her fell as heavily as burlap.

“Sorry I'm early,” he said. “I had a sudden attack of depression and figured if I didn't come over now I wouldn't make it at all.” He grinned to undermine the words.

Michele frowned. “Are you all right? Do you want to go in the den and talk? Mirabelle doesn't really need me out there, though she pretends she does.”

D.T. shook his head. “George here?”

“No. He's coming at four.”

“Heather?”

“She's across the street at a friend's. I told her to be back at twelve sharp. I'm sure she'll be here any minute. She's been looking forward to this for weeks.” Michele looked at him closely. “Do you want to say anything to me about Heather, D.T.? I mean, about how she's growing up? I worry about what you think, and it's been so long since we've had a chance to really talk.”

“I think you're doing a fine job, Michele, if that's what you mean.”

“Do you really?”

He nodded.

She examined him intently. “It means a lot to me to hear you say that, D.T. I want you to know that I'd be interested in anything you have to suggest about her. I mean, it's going to start getting tricky pretty soon, you know. Adolescent girls can be a problem.”

“Adolescent girls are the world's most febrile beings. Followed closely by middle-aged men who've slept with only one woman in their lives.”

Michele laughed and stepped back to allow him into her house. “Just so you know I can use all the help I can get,” she said to him over her shoulder as they walked down the glistening foyer. “Want a drink?”

“Sure.”

“Scotch?”

“Wine, I think. White. For a change it's not an appropriate day to get smashed.”

“I'll bring it to you in the den.”

Michele went off toward the kitchen. D.T. made his way past the double doors to the living room and the single doors to the dining room and kitchen. Although he had lived in the house for six years he had little affection for it. It was less a former home than a hotel he had visited once, on a not particularly successful business trip during which he had comported himself less than honorably.

He looked around as he walked, inspecting. The paintings and mirrors and occasional pieces were as he remembered, but the carpet and the colorings were new. Michele redecorated frequently, for no reason that he could see other than boredom and a fondness for tradesmen. The result was not always an improvement, but that didn't seem to be the point. Her decorator was a friend of Bobby E. Lee's, who had spent a year in Paris.

The den was as cozy as he remembered, possibly because he had refused to let the decorator alter it while he had lived there and Michele had evidently continued the tradition. But most of the toys she had bought him during coverture had been removed—the rear-projection TV set, the video recorder, the laser disc player, the quadraphonic music system. He wondered if George had them now, and if George would be willing to sell him the big-screen TV cheap. How she had spoiled him, though his Puritanism had caused most of her largesse to backfire, to stoke not gratitude but a persistent ember of resentment.

He sat in the soft leather chair and put his feet on the soft leather ottoman and waited for his drink. The trinkets he had given her—the calfskin edition of Emily Dickenson, the Steuben apple, the World War I topographic map of the Balkans—all were where he had placed them for her admiration. He wondered if she'd just hauled them out of storage. He walked over to inspect. No dust. No clear evidence one way or another. He returned to the chair and listened to the rhythm and blues that danced from Mirabelle's radio and smelled the smells that were as present in the air as birds.

Michele came in and handed him a glass of Chablis. It was cool perfection, as were most of her possessions, potable and otherwise. She bought wine by the case, at a discount available to no one who needed it.

Michele sat on the tufted leather couch across from him, crossed her legs, looked at him with earnest intensity. She seemed not to have aged a minute since that same look had first captured him, at a benefit auction for a crisis center he sometimes worked with. She seemed always to blend with her surroundings, to be never out of place, even on the days she had visited his office.

His eyes left hers. The painting above her head was an original Sam Francis. He liked it a lot. He liked Michele a lot, as well. He sipped his wine, feeling as buoyant as he had in months.

“So,” Michele began.

“So.”

“How've you been?”

“Fine.”

“Aren't we the jolly twosome, though.”

Michele smiled. “Either that or liars.”

They laughed uneasily.

“So what have you been doing lately?” Michele asked finally, re-crossing her legs, fiddling.

He thought of his slavering pursuit of Lucinda Finders, of his conspiracy to blackmail Chas Stone, of his endangerment of Esther Preston. “Nothing I'm proud of,” he said. “How about you?”

She shrugged. “The usual. I help out one day a week at Heather's school. That's fun.”

“Doing what?”

“I mostly help the art teacher get the materials distributed and collected. Monitor at recess. Go along on field trips. You know. It gives me an idea of how Heather spends her day, at least.”

“Right.”

“I'm pleased with the school, D.T. They're doing a nice job.”

For what Michele was paying them they should be making Einsteins by the gross. “It's nice you're involved like that,” he told her.

Her dimples told him she was pleased. “I'm doing something new with my own art, too. I've gotten kind of serious about it again.”

“Good.”

“Want to see?”

“Sure.”

She hopped up and led him toward the rear of the house, to the servant's room that was now her studio. Much of her old work was on the walls; some he liked, some were of a formlessness he couldn't bear. The piece of sculpture that had been the major focus of her work while they were married—a bronze rendering of an Amazon contorted in unbearable agony—was now headless and consigned to the far corner of the room. He gestured at it. “Accident?”

“Statement.”

He raised a brow.

“Not about women; just about me.”

She said nothing further. He made his way through scattered cans and jars and tubes of paint and joined her in the center of the room. She stood next to a large easel which was draped with a thick black cloth. “Ready?” she asked.

He nodded.

Michele flipped away the shroud. “Da Daaa.”

It was a piece of glass, the size and shape of a window or a canvass, half-covered with bright paint: abstract, wild, electric. “Glass?” he asked.

She nodded, eyeing the piece critically. “Do you know glass is perpetually melting, D.T.? Did you know that after a period of time all windows are thicker at the bottom than at the top? So with glass I get a kinetic element, but so subtle it will never be apparent in my lifetime. I enjoy not knowing what my painting will eventually be saying. It gives me, I don't know, a link with the future.”

“With glass you might get a link but you also might get breakage.”

“I know, and I'm sure a few accidents will happen. But in between those times just think how
careful
people will be with my work.” Michele's eyes sparkled. “As opposed to the canvasses they toss around so negligently. None of that with the Conway Double Panes.”

“Double?”

“I'm going to paint both sides. Abstract on one, photo-realism on the other. You get tired of one you just flip it over,
et voilà
—new mood, new color, new ambiance.”

“Sounds good.”

“I'm buying a gallery, too, did I tell you?”

“No.”

“Downtown. Michele's. Just a small place, so I can exhibit my friends, and me, and maybe some unknowns as well. I think it'll even make some money. Eventually. Joyce Tuttle's going to run it for me.”

“I thought Joyce was marrying money.”

“That fell through. Seems he was rather seriously into wearing women's clothes.”

“I hope the gallery does well, Michele. Really.”

“Thanks, D.T. I've got a lot of time on my hands these days, since Heather's in school or at ballet class all day. I don't know, I wanted to start
doing
something, you know? Instead of just
being
something? Does that make sense?” Her wide eyes begged the answer he quickly gave.

“Sure.”

“I know a lot of very talented artists who haven't got the gimmick it takes to break into the established galleries, and, well, I think I'd be contributing something, don't you?”

“No doubt about it.”

“Do you mean it? Or do you think I'm being silly?”

“It's a very worthwhile project, Michele. Go for it.”

She took his hand, inclined her head to his shoulder. He wrapped her with an arm. “I'm relieved, D.T. It's odd that I still need your approval, isn't it?”

“You're not looking for approval, Michele; you're just making conversation.”

She paused, and surveyed the studio, and nodded silently, confirming something that seemed important. “Let's go back,” she said, and returned him to the den.

They retook their places and regrasped their drinks, then toasted each other silently. “You said something about being depressed.”

“Well, you know me. Even when I feel good I get depressed because I'm not depressed.”

“Any specific cause?”

“Only my life. It seems to be getting away from me.”

Michele's eyes glinted. “Are you succumbing to one of those tiresome midlife crises, D.T.? I would have thought you were more original than that.”

He shrugged. “I'm just succumbing. Period.”

“Everything all right with you and Barbara?”

“Let's just say everything's the same.”

Michele blinked. “I imagine the two of you together, you know.”

“Doing what?”

“Having sex.”

“You're kidding.”

“No. Isn't that
outré?
I keep wondering what she does for you that I never did.”

He only smiled.

“Okay, D.T. Is she better in bed than I was? That's what I really want to know.” Her laugh was too nervous to make his answer easy.

“She's different, Michele. Only different.”

“Different how? Just out of curiosity.”

He tried to fend her off. “What makes you curious?”

She shrugged. “I'd just like to think that despite the rest of our problems our sex life was always pretty good.”

“It was. No question.”

“But not good enough.”

“It had a lot to overcome,” D.T. said, and kept himself from glancing at his surroundings, then countered her question with one of his own. “How about George? How's he do between the sheets? Not that it's any of my business.”

“Are you implying I've engaged in premarital sex, D.T.?”

“Yes.” He grinned but Michele didn't match it.

“George is … delicate. Tasteful, one might say.”

D.T. smiled maliciously. “Too bad.”

Michele started to reply but she was interrupted by the arrival of the dervish that was their daughter. Heather scampered to his side and threw herself into his lap and kissed him. He kissed her back and squeezed her. She scrambled off his legs and snuggled in beside him, pressed tightly against his flank by the fat leather arms of the chair. He dropped his own arm across her shoulders.

“Happy Thanksgiving, Daddy,” she said while still wriggling toward comfort.

“Happy Thanksgiving to you, honey. How're you doing?”

“Fine.”

“How's school?”

“Okay. I'm going to be in a play. Will you come see me?”

“Sure. What's the play about?”

“Germs.”

“Great. What else have you been doing?”

“Playing with Katra.”

“Playing what?”

“Ms. Pac-Man. I beat her every time.”

“What's Ms. Pac-Man?”

“A
video
game. Geez, Daddy. Katra has Atari; I have Intellivision. I think Intellivision's better, don't you?”

“Unquestionably.”

Michele stood up. “I'll have to leave you two alone for a minute,” she said. “I think Mirabelle needs my help.” She winked at D.T. and left the room.

Heather wriggled even closer to his side. Her hair was tied with yellow bows and smelled like lemons. Her skin was a confection. “Are you a happy girl?” he asked her, as he always did.

“Yes.”

“No problems?”

“I have to have braces.”

“Really? When?”

“A few years from now. My teeth are crooked. See?”

She showed him. They were. “What do you know about Thanksgiving?” he asked as she closed her mouth over her orthodontist's future fortune. “Did you study it in school?”

“We studied it
last
year. The Indians and the Pilgrims and that one, what's his name?”

“Squanto?”

“Yes. Him. He showed them how to use fish. Do they still do that, Daddy, put fish in the ground to make things grow? It seems awfully gross.”

“They use mostly chemicals now, I think. Have you thought about what you're thankful for today?”